Right from the start it was easy to predict that with its critical acclaim and box-office success, Margaret Edson's first play, the Off-Broadway hit Wit, would be a contender for "Best Of" awards this season and even the Pulitzer Prize. This week, Edson, a 37-year-old kindergarten teacher, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Also, in the first awards announcements of season, Wit won Outer Critics Circle nominations for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play and Best Actress. It's not too much of a gamble to predict that Drama Desk and Obie Awards will be next.
The play, which was considered too depressing for a commercial run on Broadway, is hard to sum up in a sentence. But, with its poignancy, humor and prose, it's anything but a downer.
Wit, based on Edson's experiences in 1990 working in the cancer and AIDS clinics of a Washington hospital, tells of Dr. Vivian Bearing, a philosophy professor with ovarian cancer fighting for her life and fighting the indifference of the medical establishment. For solace, she uses her passion for the sonnets of John Donne to, as Edson put it, "comment on the relationship between love and knowledge." The language, style and humor have captivated critics and audiences.
Kathleen Chalfant, the star (famed for her roles in Angels In America) noted her pride. "We're the little engine that could!" She was referring to the fact that Edson's play almost didn't see the light of day. Even Edson had her doubts. "It's a wonderful surprise that anyone would want to go see this play about a woman's struggle to die with grace," said Edson to reporters when she was called out of her classroom at Atlanta's Centennial Place Elementary School and told of winning the Pulitzer.
She laughed that she was cleaning up after a class projects that involved insects. The playwright teacher noted that the play had a miraculous route to becoming a hit. "I sent it to every theater in the country and everyone rejected it." Even after winning raves in its 1995 South Coast Repertory world premiere (with, Megan Cole in the lead) and winning six Los Angeles Drama Critics Awards, including Best World Premiere, there were no takers. Wit was shopped around for two years.
Even now, Edson isn't immediately giving up her day job. "I'll write another play when I have something to say," she says, "but I love teaching. It's serious work. I don't plan to quit. I think these kids are going to save the world. I'm happy and excited to be part of that world."
Walter Charles, a veteran of such shows as A Christmas Carol (Madison Square Garden), Call Me Madam (City Center Encores), 110 In The Shade (NY City Opera), Aspects of Love, Me and My Girl, La Cage aux Folles and Cats, plays a primary cancer-care physician with a healthy ego. He's overjoyed at Wit's success. "This type of work is vital to theater," Charles observes, "and we almost didn't make it. As someone who's spent the majority of my career in musical theater, it's been a real gift. Since it's difficult to crossover from musicals to the straight play world, this has been an extraordinary piece of luck." The actor said he had long been desperate to do a play that explored vital issues. "It's restored my faith that this kind of intensely personal theater can still happen."
Charles, Chalfant and five other of the nine-member cast have been with the play since its East Coast premiere at Long Wharf in September 1998. "It's reassuring that there are wonderful American playwrights writing wonderful American plays," says Charles, "with gifted, young American directors, like our own Derek Anson Jones, capable of plumbing their depths; and talented and gifted American actors capable of bringing them to life."
Wit had producers who bucked the odds. "It's frightening how close we came to being stillborn," adds Charles. "Because of its subject matter, nobody'd touch it. Then there are its intellectual qualities that probably scared some producers. Once you've experienced the play's power, it's incredible to believe no one was willing to take a chance. I have to applaud Long Wharf's [artist director] Doug Hughes and [managing director] Michael Ross."
When Hughes became Long Wharf artistic director, he wanted to open a 199-seat space and knew director Jones, who suggested he read Wit. "With standing ovations there and the awards won," noted Charles, "everyone in New York suddenly took notice. They all came to see it, but there were no takers until Manhattan Class Company's Robert LuPone and Bernard Telsey said, 'If no one will do it, we'll do it ourselves.'" They did in 1997 and it won three Connecticut Drama Critics Awards, including Best Play. Long Wharf co-produced the initial New York run with MCC at the latter's West 28th Street theatre.
Chalfant said that initial support for Wit came last year when Patti LuPone was a post-performance guest host. "An audience member asked why there weren't more plays like this. Patti almost jumped out of her chair, saying 'You as the audience have to demand that this type of quality of work is produced. That there's a market for it and it will be supported.'" And it began to build.
The discussions continued as Tuesday Night Talkbacks and have become a popular sideline at the Union Square, where the show was moved by MCC, Long Wharf and Off Broadway "angel" Daryl Roth. Chalfant and members of the cast attend along with a guest moderator. These have ranged from Ms. LuPone, sister of aforementioned MCC co-executive director Robert LuPone, and Edson's agent to members of the medical community. The discussions and audience Q&As are lively, sometimes heated - especially, as Chalfant noted, when audience members recount their own or family experiences with the medical community."
A recent discussion became quite poignant when an audience member inquired how the play has affected the lives of the cast. Chalfant cited an example close to home: the death last year of her brother from cancer. Paula Pizzi, who plays caring nurse Susie Monahan, spoke of how the subject matter "has brought the cast closer and closer together into a tight-knit family unit." It becomes clear that despite featuring a lead character of scant warmth, Wit has a humanity that reaches far past the footlights.
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